SACRAMENTO – California Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas (D-Hollister) announced on Thursday that he has appointed Assemblyman Juan Alanis (R-Modesto) to the Assembly Select Committee on Retail Theft.

The speaker created the select committee following the growing concern of increased reports of retail theft up and down the state.

“I am honored to have been chosen by Speaker Rivas to lend my voice and experience on this important issue,” said Alanis said in a press release. “Retail thefts continue to be a growing and serious problem plaguing our communities, negatively impacting public safety and our economy. I look forward to working with my colleagues and bringing my constituents’ concerns to the committee. We cannot just kick the problem to the next legislature. We must take real action on retail thefts. We cannot just talk about it endlessly.”

As a former Stanislaus County Sheriff Deputy, Alanis brings nearly three decades of law enforcement experience to the committee. He also serves as the vice chair of the Public Safety Committee.

“I have worked closely and have a trust-built relationship with the select committee’s chair, Assemblymember Rick Chavez Zbur (D-Los Angeles),” said Alanis. “He is someone I collaborated with to reach a compromise with many competing advocates and agencies on AB 355, my rifle-training bill for law enforcement academies across our state that was signed into law this year. I look forward to continue working with him on this important issue of rampant retail thefts across our state.”

Alanis, a freshman legislator, has been vocal about the retail-theft issue since his election last November. He was the lead co-signer on a letter asking the Little Hoover Commission to analyze and report on the impacts of Proposition 47 in California. The Commission has agreed to take up the issue after Alanis, in coordination with Public Safety Committee Chairman Assemblyman Reggie Jones-Sawyer (D-South Los Angeles), gathered a majority of members in both houses of the state legislature to sign the letter. The study is the first step taken to address retail theft issues since Proposition 47 was passed by California voters in 2014.

Proposition 47 changed certain low-level crimes from potential felonies to misdemeanors. 

According to the Public Policy Institute of California, an “examination of retail theft and robbery in California points toward recent increases across the state.” Focusing on California’s 15 largest counties, the PPIC found that “while recent trends are especially notable int he Bay Area and the Central Valley, there have been significant jumps in commercial burglaries in Southern Coastal California, and Los Angeles County has the highest commercial robbery rate.”

The study also goes on to point out that “while California’s shoplifting rate jumped notably in 2022, it remains lower than it was at any point in the decade before the pandemic.” The commercial robbery rate, however, “reached its highest level since 2008, and the commercial robbery rate rose to roughly where it was in 2017,” and that the “challenges of retail theft and robbery appear to be widespread, but they vary across the state.”